


choose pain

by galacticbasic



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Saves The Day, But not by being the Jedi he should be, Dark, Heavy Angst, Hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi, Implied Mind Rape, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Maul is a whole son of a rancor, Protective Anakin Skywalker, This was supposed to be a oneshot but what can you do, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:35:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26693842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticbasic/pseuds/galacticbasic
Summary: Upon learning the plans Darth Sidious holds in store for the Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker, Darth Maul recaptures Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi in order to set a trap, foil the plans of his erstwhile Master, and complete his revenge. At his mercy, Obi-Wan learns a simple truth: there are some things worse than pain.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Darth Maul
Comments: 11
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

“Choose,” the horned thing commands and like always, like always, he chooses pain. Maul likes to lean close, and hiss at his ear, and slice claws across his throat and intimate that it is a choice he never had. That suffering was something forced upon him without reprieve, given as an unwanted gift to fuel his hatred and his power. That with choice lies freedom, and with freedom lies a responsibility to the conscience. With a conscience, one might keep hold of a moral center for as long as desired, assuming one has the adequate mental fortitude required to do so. Maul allows him his one choice, one freedom, one responsibility—one possession in this wasteland that is his and his alone. As if this, somehow, is a favor. 

He always chooses pain. Now the Zabrak whispers that he really isn’t free at all, while Savage carries out a striking melody of fresh violations on his skin or deeper as he writhes and is crushed, beaten, bloodied and singing out the horror which he would never dare to speak. He isn’t free because to him, there is but one choice which would not contradict the essence of his being, his soul of righteous arrogance and light; there is but one choice which he is not above. Maul cannot drag him into the blasphemy of freedom. Jedi are never free.

Savage likes to ask his choice of implements in torture, though his response here is meaningless; he’ll use them all eventually. Not that the prisoner answers. Maul reasons, when options weigh the same, it is better to let fate decide than burden oneself with choice—is that a Jedi teaching? Or perhaps the teaching is, when powerless and tied, it is better not to anger captors. Let them make you plead for all you’re worth, coward Jedi, but when the saber hits transparisteel you do not splinter, do not crack, only grin and bear the lashes and choose pain. Maul hoped it wouldn’t be this easy to break him, and his suspicions prove correct as time wears on, and still the Jedi never wavers. 

“You are still free to choose, of course,” the red-and-black tattooed demon grins, and then his expression drops to a near-zero stare. “But choose wisely this time.”

It has been months, years, millennia of this. And it has been no time at all. When the hologram rises in its lines of ghastly blue, both sides choke at what they see, and that which they cannot see, that which lies hidden behind their pale illuminated eyes. 

“Anakin,” he stutters out, no voice left to call attention, only the shell of a man and his choice. The Chosen One knows exactly where he is now; Maul has planned it, the Padawan coming to his Master’s rescue, the bitter fight, the poignant reunion. The hopes dashed and intimacies dead on lips. The climax and the resolution of his life’s toil. 

“Don’t come for me,” he whimpers, but the holo is already out. 

* * *

Maul paces the chamber, licking Human blood from his fingertips. Much more of this and the Force will pull the delicate reams of life from his charge, and all that will be left will be remains. He lets his mind brush the sensitive, unguarded parts of the shattered Jedi before him, running mental sweeps along the sharp broken edges and the pieces still intact. His will is strong, but it is bending. It longs to cave to his caressing touch, but the prisoner keeps it chained away from his desire like a loth-cat on a leash. He does not have to speak. The command echoes as it always does. 

_Choose._

“What do you want me to say?” he asks, desperately, but the game does not work like he wants it to. Maul smiles, because his captive already knows the answer to his question. Choice. Freedom. Responsibility. Morality. Those words mean nothing here. 

His tongue stings when he speaks it, hardly above a murmur or a breath. There is nothing left of him now, no dignity preserved. Just a flicker of a flame which he extinguishes himself, so one more Jedi, the one for whom he would sacrifice his very being, might have a chance to breathe, to live, and not fall.

“I can’t hear you,” Maul roars, and his hardened body tenses and rears back, all lines of red and black and tormented glee across his face like a mask, glowing yellow eyes peering out from beneath, eyes that are neither his own nor someone else’s, yet both at once, the stare of a god of shimmering hedon as ancient and animal as the impulses to which he willingly submits.

The captive held beneath his unwavering gaze never wanted to ask for this. Part of him believes that he cannot.

But he can, and he will, and he does.

“Pleasure,” the defeated thing grits out; it is the only other choice, and for Anakin he would give himself over to something worse than pain. The compromise of morality to save another is something too gray for a Jedi, who views the world in blinding contrasts of light and dark, to comprehend; to understand the only right decision is the one whose consequences are best—or at least, the least evil of the options—this particular Jedi would have to be aware of what those consequences might be. But he is not. He knows nothing, sees nothing, even as the dark lord of the Sith knows and sees everything, for darkness does not preclude his sight. He only knows what it is he wants—to save a life, it is all he has ever wanted—and that this being which paces and hisses and forces him to choose can give it to him without repercussion. 

Maul has made him believe his decision is meaningful, but as in Savage’s favorite game of vibroshivs and burn-scars it is not. It serves, whichever way he chooses in the end, to lead him to believe he has made the wrong decision. He knows what his responsibility dictates. But another bout of Savage’s methods would kill him now, and Anakin’s whole compassionate endeavor would lead to naught, and if he dies the boy he’s raised might snap and kill and rage and that is the one outcome he could not abide. Anakin Skywalker needs more guidance; this has been the Master’s failing, that he could not build a fortress upon one whose foundation was laid on sand. It is still his fault. Everything is. 

His captor caresses that thought, plants the hint, the overture of guilt within him and waters it tenderly with an overabundance of anguish until the very muscles of it struggle just beneath his skin. All it needs now is sunlight; sweet, warm, golden sunlight—and it will grow. 

“Please, general,” Maul purrs, the golden flash of his eyes so close, so warm. 

“The pleasure is all mine.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say except: I’m sorry? Obi-Wan isn’t having a good time. He never does.

The intimacy of hatred is a revelation. Mind addled, some melange of drugs occluding his connection to the Force, this one emotion remains concrete, binds him to his captor, and takes him into its pitch warmth like an orphan seeking shelter from the streets—only to find himself in a stranger, darker vicinity than where he began. Maul’s hatred centers him, breaks through the slew of physicality foisted upon him unwillingly, though chosen, and lets the demon Zabrak in deeper than either believed it was possible to be. His eyes are falling shut, now, until a taloned hand grips his jaw and squeezes, a reminder and a warning. 

“Stay with me,” Maul growls, though he does not have to; every minute variance of his burdensome emotions is recognized and reacted to before it even comes to the forefront of his conscious thought. But this creature likes the whisper of his words upon his prisoner, the wet press of a tongue against his ear, the vague shudder it elicits and a rising of his delicate, sapid dread. Maul prefers, mostly, to keep him aware just by squirming inside his head; but he has enjoyed that real effort on his part is not necessity. It will become such. It is here already, the moment the dark one both longed for desperately and hoped would never come. 

Kenobi is slipping away.

Maul wants him—no, needs him to be cognizant of the moment when he takes away his everything. He will kill Anakin Skywalker, and the double vengeance upon both this man and his old Master will be, finally, complete. Then he can rest, and the options for his pet will no longer be pleasure and pain, but life and death—and he will live, because he will have no choice at all. The Zabrak will drag it out until every trace of youth and vigor has drained from this pretty, golden Human, and then he will kill him, too. 

But for now—

Now he is brimming with bitter tears, and the stench of resignation rises from him like sweat, like heat, like anything.

Skin marred with a hundred kinds of marks, cuts, bruises, muscle remaining that should be long atrophied, hair growing long and mussed against his sweat-glistening cheeks, body rimed with blood and oil—Maul has never seen a more pleasurable sight. How beautiful he is, alone like this, shaking from exertion and struggle, a lower lip bitten through; even the fear in his durasteel eyes shattering to nothing, less than nothing, vacant when the pain goes. It will almost be a shame to further his suffering, when he is already so perfectly chastised. But it can only get better from here. Everything is under his complete control. 

Except that it isn’t. 

The chamber is too cold for Human sensibility, but the endless wastes of Dathomir are much the same. His skin rises in goosebumps as Maul steps back to admire his creation, the hot imprint of where their bodies have been marking the table of durasteel beneath him with a signature of sour, smeared blood. His hands are by his shoulders, terribly restrained. The smallish cell, to his eyes, is filled with bloodshot haze, the walls beyond gray and cracking plasticrete, devoid of identifying marks or decoration. How long this place has been his home he can no longer remember. 

“Your friend will be coming soon,” Maul whispers, bending to swipe a lock of hair from his eyes. “Your Padawan. Your savior. Your Skywalker.” His eyes trace the lean figure, taking in the last moments of its defiled beauty. He wonders, with a tinge of regret and more than a full dose of longing, if he has gone too far. 

Or not far enough. 

* * *

Kenobi is himself again. The mention of Skywalker’s name has roused him, but he trembles. The guilt that his lord has tended to so carefully, so earnestly, so fruitfully, overwhelms him. Good. He understands what he has chosen. The understanding brings shame worse than pain, but when Anakin comes, he must know it was _for_ him—for both of them—

“Yes, Anakin,” Maul muses, bringing the mental link to bear. “He will never understand what you have endured here. Only I know what you are. What you have become.”

“I am a Jedi Knight,” Kenobi says, and the defiance there is palpable. But he is not the Jedi Knight he once was. And he never will be again. 

Maul lifts him by the scruff of the neck, knuckles clenched into the dirtied hair there, and the shock blinds him as the bridge of his nose impacts durasteel. Rasping breaths cut through the warm rush at the back of his throat, a spatter of crimson from his mouth and nose. He can hardly lift himself, much less fight. Displeasure and pain tighten the cramping muscles of his face into a grimace. His wrists, too, bleed.

“What you are is _mine,”_ the voice comes to him like the truth, like the Force, like a command. “You no longer belong to the Jedi, to Anakin Skywalker, to your own Master whom I killed before you. To see you bound and made pliant—what would Qui-Gon Jinn think of you?” 

He blinks, the pang of his former Master’s name making a vise around his heart. Qui-Gon, if he were here, if it were then—he would tear Maul to shreds. Anakin might do the same.

“The way you are now would disgust your Jedi counterparts beyond revolt,” Maul continues, and his prisoner shudders with some dark realization far from the living Force beseeching him not to listen, not to feel. “But I know the value of such things, as they do not. They will judge you for the method of your survival... but I do not. I know you, Kenobi,” he purrs, “as you do not even know yourself. I will keep you safe.”

Safe, and warm, and pleasurable. Maul tempts him like a devil, promises of all this, all this anguish to go away, to end in the heat of his touch and the cool pulse of his veins like healing water beneath him as the being brings his charge to safety. It must be false—it has to be—lies are the way of this manufacturer of all his horrors. Obi-Wan Kenobi cannot choose to believe this dark lord of the Sith, however velvet and enticing he may sound, however cool, however soothing; he has neither the desire nor the ability to save him. So instead—

Instead he chooses pain. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anakin comes to the rescue.   
> (Content warning for referenced sexual trauma, descriptive maiming, and muteness/laryngeal damage as a result of Force-choking.)

When Anakin comes he is mercifully unconscious. 

Obi-Wan does not see the dry rage in his savior’s eyes, nor hear the howling Savage as the Jedi beats him down in the antechamber, makes a slash through his thighs to hobble him, drives the tip of the saber through both of his arms, the left and then the right—but leaves him alive. Obi-Wan does not smell the charred ash of flesh burnt against the Jedi’s skin, the remnants of countless enemies he has cut down in order to reach him. Hundreds—no, thousands of fighters skilled enough to make whole worlds tremble—and Anakin gifts each a smoldering piece of his soul even as he relieves them of their own lives, one after another. Obi-Wan does not sense the presence of his captor, of Maul, intertwined though he is inside his wracked mind, as he stands, head down and robed, and waits. Waits as to obscure the depravity of what he has done; not for his own dignity, nor that of his captive, but for the sake of his opponent, to relish his shock as he steps aside and then revels in it. 

He is waiting for Anakin. 

He is waiting to kill him.

* * *

“At last, you are here,” Maul pronounces, the unlocked door flinging open as if by its own volition. Divesting himself of the heavy, black robe, he throws it over his shoulders to settle on the body chained behind him, poised like a martyr upon the altar of durasteel. 

Anakin’s eyes are blank, now. There is neither fear, nor disgust, nor even the slightest cadence of anger inside the realm of his presence, the endlessness he has made of the Force about him. His gaze flicks to the man, and then the monster. Something in the cutting blue blade of his stare is raw enough to taste of Maul’s own sweat, his frame of bone and metal and the bitterness thrumming inside of his chest; to move into his head and extract every twinge of slightest memory therein. As Savage tortured his Master. As the Zabrak laughed. As the demon himself made his place in Kenobi, and every intimate act that passed between. The shame of pleasure, Obi-Wan’s. The pleasure of pain. The guilt, and fear, and hope. This Jedi with the blank eyes before him swallows it all, a void again in the Force. He takes it and transmutes it into something unrecognizable as it enters him. Something carnivorous, a beast in his stomach—and yet nothing at all. The absence of all of these things. 

And Anakin Skywalker knows everything. 

Maul stands, transfixed, waiting for the familiar anger to enter into this being of such power and cruel design. It should end in fire and a litany of blows. It should end in the raging fury of some creature about to be destroyed, helpless to retain his strength. It should end for this Jedi, once and for all. 

Instead Anakin licks his lips. His blue blade ignites, shrouding his face in a glow like the striking of lightning, blister-white ozone sparking through the atmosphere. 

He utters a single word.

“Run.”

* * *

But the twin red blades flame to life.

Anakin smiles. 

“Then you will die.”

* * *

The sabers clash with all the intensity of a collapsing star, strength against strength. Maul falters, stumbling back, and his opponent has thrown four strikes by the time he finds ground, blocking by the flick of his wrist, back and forth. Anakin comes at him like a whirlwind, exploiting his weaknesses, the lack of maneuverability in the little chamber. He keeps his thrusts controlled and short, the crimson light forced to the defensive as Maul parries, steps up against the wall, and flips over his head. The Jedi dives for him, but he is quick, and pulls his metal appendages away before a hit can land. Maul darts into the antechamber where Savage lies, maimed and groaning. 

Skywalker is coming. 

His long strides echo his confidence through the terraced room, which stretches before him like the palaces of Naboo. Bodies lie in every corner, and droids in more, each a pawn in the scheme; a deterrent for the Jedi. He has slaughtered or terminated every last one. 

The urge overwhelms the Zabrak to obey the order, abandon hope, run. The phantom sensation of acid building in the taut muscles of his legs, the scent of charred protectors at the base of his tongue, the realization he is alone except for a helpless Savage, perhaps alone on this entire world—Maul’s fingers clench around his weapon, and a buzz of energy alerts him to what his senses cannot perceive. In an instant, the Jedi is upon him again, whirling and slashing like a madman, as if he cares nothing for his own life or state of injury. Managing to block a strike which would have swiped him clean through the chest, Maul flies to the ground, the saber flinging from his hand, air expelled from his spasming lungs. Suddenly he is clawing at his throat, lips pulled back over his teeth in a sneer, silent save for the hiss escaping the cavity of his chest. His own dark energy is leagues from close to the power Skywalker emits as though it is his very being. He cannot resist. 

Maul braces himself for the blue spark of the death blow. If he has failed it is nothing to him now. Kenobi will have to live with himself, and that is revenge enough. 

Anakin switches off his lightsaber, and for a moment Maul believes he will asphyxiate him instead. But the breath returns to his lungs, and he falls to his knees, hands slick against the black-veined marble of the antechamber. The Jedi comes forward, down a few steps constituting the dais of the great room, and stands before him, and stares. Maul tries to scramble and finds that he cannot. Whatever Force is holding him in place he does not know. 

“You are the Chosen One,” he blusters, muscles beginning to shake and cave against the pressure on his body, his metal joints and tendons of flesh, as if he could snap. “Lord Sidious was right to want y—”

Maul’s throat closes in a squeak, and again his fingers find the tender flesh above his trachea, a hand of durasteel that is not there closing around it with all the force of a hydraulic compressor centered on his windpipe. His mouth is open, curiously, and his lips move to curse, to beg, to say anything. 

“Silence,” Anakin says.

And then his gloved mechnohand twists, flicks upward, and crushes into a fist. 

Crackling vision blanks to white, blistering red, and white again. A minor clicking sound signals Anakin’s objective met, and again the Zabrak drops to the floor, the Force receding around him like a dark tide. If he could scream out his grievance, if he could plead, if he could think of something to say—if he did not feel as though decapitated— 

But his body will not respond to his commands. Darth Maul slumps to the marble bodily, turning onto his side, and the cape of his destroyer whips over his hand as he reaches, unsuccessfully, for it. With the opposite he clutches his neck, running a finger over the crippled organ beneath, damaged beyond repair.

Hazy eyesight, the echo of footsteps, and the shadow of a man.

Maul loses consciousness to the melody of Anakin Skywalker. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anakin needs his own content warning, I think. I had no intention of making him so violent, but it's probably fair that he would go into Vader-mode after seeing Obi-Wan so wounded. 
> 
> As always, feedback is appreciated! I don't exactly have a set plan for this story so I'd like some input as to where I should take it :D Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anakin takes Obi-Wan back to the ship.

Sense returns to the young Jedi as he enters the chamber where his Master lies, Maul’s cloak draped over his still figure, the shallow rise and fall of his chest to indicate he is yet alive. But Anakin doesn’t need the sense of sight to know this. Obi-Wan’s silent light fills him, cleanses him of the horror he has just perpetrated, even as its own energy is weak and wavering. A flick of his little finger and the restraints are off as he strides up, crouching at the table, a hand to the warmth of Obi-Wan’s cheek. 

When he flinches, the white heat of Anakin’s anger grows to inconsolate.

“Master?” he says, evenly. “Obi-Wan, I need you to wake up.” Desperation creeps into his voice as no sign reaches him that the Jedi hears him, senses his presence beyond the undercurrent of dreams, or nightmares. Anakin moves a hand to his elbow, pawing at it with fingers that are now shaking. “Obi-Wan. I don’t have all day here, Master. We’ve gotta get back to the ship. Ahsoka’s going to cry when she—she’s going to kill me, and Cody—Cody’s been worried sick—for—weeks—” 

Anakin kneels at the altar, the dwindling ember of presence fizzling out into black emptiness beneath the ocean of his guilt, and fear.

“Master,” he says, “you have to wake up.”

* * *

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan addresses him dimly, through a haze of gnawing pain that has faded into an unrecognizable ache. And quietly, silently, he metes out a small chastisement; a reminder:

_ Didn’t I tell you not to come? _

“Obi-Wan! Sith hells, Master, did you expect anything else?” The sigh Anakin releases drives his statement home as he takes off his own cloak and adds it to Maul’s, cool breath finally finding him again, the heat of resentment drained away, put away, until the time when it will fuel his elusive power once more.

A weak smile, concealed partially by the growth of his beard, finds his apprentice and tries to ease his nerves; he is past speech now. Obi-Wan looks over at him with eyes shot through with blood, and tries to blink away the glaze of tears gathering there, to swallow down the thickening of a knot in his throat. Anakin’s stare is filled with forced comfort, a neutral pleasant expression barely veiling the disquiet of emotions roiling beneath, relief mingled with lingering anger, and guilt, and fear. 

Here they are, alone together, yet hiding from one another as if the gaze of the entire galaxy were upon them. 

Obi-Wan falters when he tries to push himself up on his elbows, finding his body unwilling to submit to his requests for strength, for movement, the fibers of his physical form crying out in complaint and defiance. So instead Anakin stands, and guides him onto his side, and wraps the cloaks about him like blankets. The sheen of grime on his skin won’t wipe away without a sonic shower, and now he longs for it. Obi-Wan doesn’t know if he remembers what clean feels like anymore. 

Or if he ever will again. 

“I have to get you to the ship,” Anakin repeats, drawing him from his daze. “The medical droid is there. I need to lift you.”

Obi-Wan looks as if he hardly understands. The compulsion to lie back down, to sleep, fills his head as he makes a vain attempt at sitting up. Anakin leans down beside him, steadying him, wondering if he should repeat the imperative; wondering if he knows what he is doing at all.

Slowly, carefully, he eases his Master into his arms.

Without armor or robes he is lighter than usual, but his musculature has diminished on his frame as well. The beat of his heart quickens as Anakin lifts him, their bond thrumming with what Obi-Wan feels but cannot put to words, his only release the spider-silk threads of light that travel between them. The truth of it wounds them both, but neither can prevent it. There are things worse than pain. 

Maul and Savage lie where they have fallen, and Anakin makes no move either to finish them or to aid in their preservation. Revenge may come as it is wont to do, in moments opportune; but for now he must have patience and attend to Obi-Wan, and the task at hand. Outside the fortress the terrain steepens, littered with broken bodies and the tang-electrical scent of trashed machinery. The Force lightens his steps as he makes his way back to the starship, holding his ailing Master close. Obi-Wan loses consciousness again, but this time he is clinging to life, if only just for his Padawan.

The starship stands where he put it down; thankfully this time it sustained no more than cosmetic damages when he daringly landed it as close to the fortress as he could without obliterating the poor battered Republic transport, Force help him. No one waits for the pair aboard; save for Anakin’s favorite R2 unit and the meager medical equipment supplied within. He’d made sure the rusty green med-droid was still functional before his departure; but the young Jedi hardly suspected it would be as bad as this. A dozen years of taking care of Obi-Wan, and nothing the pair had ever endured together could compare to this—this fear.

The medical droid sputters through its vocabulator, talking over itself in relaying the worst of the injuries to Anakin, as if it cannot decide whether organ damage or sepsis is more life-threatening. It manages to stabilize the Jedi Master’s condition and begin administering antibiotics and fluids; only then can Anakin breathe well enough to take off. He had walked into the trap Maul and Savage laid for him, achieved his mission, and come back victorious—nearly. Against the wishes of the Council, but that almost had to be expected. Anakin doesn’t know what kind of self-respecting Council could betray one of its own members to Maul’s famed cruelty; but none of that matters now. It only matters that his Master is safe.

He can only hope he stays that way.

Anakin’s practiced hands grasp the ship’s controls, shaking before he can slip into the necessary meditative state, slowing his breathing, taking note of the flickering buttons and switches on the control panel, the slow countdown of the automatic takeoff sequence, the numbers he has programmed for the jump to hyperspace. Meditation sears him, on the inside; focusing on his feelings is as impossible and destructive as harnessing a dying star. But it is a welcome flame, to score away the tenderness, to rid himself of that attachment if only for a moment’s lesser pain. 

As the ship rises into the atmosphere and beyond, Anakin stares out at the bluish-black expanse of stars, and wonders if the peace the Jedi preach exists at all. Pressing back into his seat for the jolt of whirling hyperspace, white and shocking in the viewscreen, Anakin sits and meditates on supernovae and shaking fingertips that burn and wonders if perhaps, perhaps, the Sith Maul and Savage have given him a glimpse of reality at last and this is what the galaxy culminates into and there is nothing else but little lesser evils and deaths and lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan will deal with what he’s been through eventually. For now Anakin is kind of having his own crisis, haha. Ideas on where I should take this are much appreciated! Having post-exam writer’s block sucks.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Anakin takes Obi-Wan back to the Temple, he hasn't yet woken up from his nightmare.

Durasteel talons grip the girth of his arms, yet muscular, yet covered with the Jedi robes, but he is incapable of struggle. Maul stands far above, gleaming fury in the dark, but the glint in his yellow irises seems close and the heat of his rancid breath strong as he smiles and then sneers. The stained walls are closing in about him as if he is pinned inside a garbage masher and suddenly he cannot breathe at all, and he strains and he chokes and his lips are parted in some unfamiliar plea. Savage is to his left or his right, though he cannot see but pyrite eyes glistening through the dusky light, the twilight darkness, searching for a seed of hatred in his mind but finding nothing. Regret lies there, emotion lies there, but nothing more. 

Savage lays a finger across his stomach, undoing the Jedi belt with a nail and crossing down his abdomen. The lacings of his leggings are done, and soon undone, pulled-away robes baring him from ribs to pelvis and Savage only pauses to thumb the pulse thrumming still steadily at the meeting of his hip and thigh. Humiliation drives a quick shove of his leg as far as it will move, binders restraining him, but it does no more than glance against his captor. Still Savage growls out a warning and vaults onto the altar, slamming his knee into the point where his thumb caressed until his captive nearly twitches with the pounding of his heart made conduit through the pulsing artery. His hands make contact with the Jedi’s throat and chest and the pulse is there, too, in his heart, a reminder of his life made bitter at his defenseless, weakened state. The Zabrak leans down. 

“You are about to wish you’d died with your Master.” Savage glances up at Maul, and with a nod, releases his neck slowly. Obi-Wan purses his lips against a muttered retort, stifled for his own benefit. “When I am finished,” Savage continues, “you will know nothing but pain.”

Obi-Wan tastes fear when Maul’s gaze grips his own, squirming beneath Savage’s searching hands, mind wandering to implements of torture in various styles and designs. None appear and that, itself, makes way for terror. He could accept death, willingly even, if it were the will of the Force. But he knows as well as Maul does that his suffering will be extended as long as his body and spirit will allow, and it is this kind of life he fears living, in the end, having nothing left to bargain.

Though his tongue is heavy and his jaw swollen from strikes, he remembers the Code, and begins its recitation, a youngling’s meditation to free his mind from apprehension about his physical state. He will survive. That is all that matters.

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

Maul crouches above him. “Peace is a lie.”

Kenobi will not listen.

_There is no ignorance, there is knowledge._

“The knowledge that I killed your Master? The knowledge of your being here, at my mercy? The knowledge of the horrors you brought upon me, which will soon become your own?”

Obi-Wan falters, but keeps his gaze away from Savage’s preparations. Maul brings down a fist to his eye, but still he will not torture himself with the sight of it. The pain will be the same regardless.

_There is no passion, there is serenity._

“Savage can feel your passion. Can you feel his?” Maul smiles, and Obi-Wan is tempted to follow his stare to its conclusion. Before he can resist the Zabrak has drawn his breath from his lungs and those that come next are rattled and gasping, and he can hardly form the words to continue. 

_There is no chaos, there is harmony._

“Does your body know harmony, Kenobi?”

Savage drives in his point with a low growl, but Obi-Wan’s answering groan is somewhat less dignified. They have not wrenched a scream from him yet but he knows the worst is coming. His vision clouds and his teeth clench and he grits out the final verse.

_There is no death, there is the Force._

There comes a silence where the pain subsides; a moment of relief.

“The Force cannot save you.”

Then he struggles, for there is honor in continuing to fight even when the battle is already lost, and so much guilt in resignation; still, Savage fulfills his promises, spoken and unspoken, and Obi-Wan saves his strength for reciting the code through unbidden tears and broken breaths and trembling, though he fears sometimes through the haze separating his mind and body that his teeth might shatter in his mouth from the force of his own grimace. Trying to compel his body to relax is strenuous, impossible. Savage’s skin upon him is hot as forged beskar. Maul’s face is a pale point of light kilometers away. And he is gone.

Without respite he awakens, returns to himself. He returns to himself as a Padawan, unremembering where or when or who or even what has been done to him or why it is happening or how it is possible for such darkness to exist in the galaxy at all. Praying for a mercy he will never receive, there beneath the trembling walls of the altar chamber, Obi-Wan Kenobi returns to his body and finds it helpless and alone. It is speaking, though, in the way that it can, in the way a child does when shock has overcome it.

It is pleading for Qui-Gon.

“I killed him!” the Zabrak demon spits, crimson as blood and black as tar with eyes that gleam like kyber, “Don’t you remember?” 

But he does not remember—he cannot—

_Get out of my head,_ he pleads, and his Master is dead, as he cannot be dead, as he should be here beside him—he is but a Padawan now, he can remember no more than that. There is blood on his legs and lines of scarlet well up on his stomach from nail marks and his Master must save him, he will come for him, he is the only one who can. It must be a lie. He cannot be dead. It is impossible.

But his mind returns and it is true. Qui-Gon Jinn, too, has gone and abandoned him, like Anakin, everyone has left him and the Council will send no aid and the Force should bring him peace but _peace is a lie and the Force cannot save you any more than you can save yourself from—_

“Master!”

Anakin’s voice. The light of the Temple streams into the Healing Halls, haloing his former apprentice in golden afternoon light. 

_Golden, glimmering eyes._

Anakin’s eyes shine blue, and clear, and betray his concern even while they are smiling. Obi-Wan is as pale as he has ever been, bone-white, but his body is recovering. He lies in a biobed against the whitewashed duracrete, machines about beeping peacefully, recording his heart rate and vitals. The needle in his hand itches, but he is rehydrating. The sheets lie soft against him, and the pain is almost gone. 

“You look troubled. How do you feel?” Anakin’s eyes, inquisitive, knowing more than he dares to speak yet speaking more than he dares to know, to think about, a gruesome line he cannot pursue, left to slither in the recesses of his head as he questions silently.

The sunlight warms his clammy skin, Obi-Wan’s, the tranquility of the place overwhelming after weeks of dread. It is a different kind of emptiness; and Anakin is here to drive it out, so corporeal it cannot be a dream of innocence and peace. The emptiness falls into shadow, splashed and shattered on the walls like water evaporating into mist. 

“Better, now I’m awake,” he says, and means it.

But Anakin’s brow knits in his forehead; he knows better than to trust, and perhaps, he thinks, this is a trick of Obi-Wan’s, shields in the Force thrown up forever to shut him out. “A nightmare?” 

“You might call it that.”


End file.
